


Family Portrait

by Michael_McGruder



Series: Argadnel Series [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:39:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3111539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_McGruder/pseuds/Michael_McGruder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snapshot of a family made up of survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> Hail Mary is the prequel to this story, and while you won't be completely lost if you don't read it first, I would highly recommend it.

Dimension 333.276.551

Argadnel, Europa 2393

 

Arnold adjusted the mirrored aviator sunglasses back into a comfortable position on his nose before picking up one of the baseballs in his bucket. He tossed it lazily into the air and cracked it across the field in a pop fly.

Michael caught it easily in his worn leather mitt. He caught the next two just the same before his older brother started making him work for it.

Michael had been practicing for his centre fielder position playing for the Argadnel Eagles Little League baseball team. So far the Eagles had had been trashed by the Falga Flyers five years running. Michael fully intended to do something about that.

When the bucket was empty, Michael went around collecting the balls as Arnold shrugged on his favourite leather bomber jacket. It was a little warm for it, but Arnold rarely went without it, and endured the mild overheating.

He sat on the metal bleachers, resting his arms on the seats behind him, laying his head back. A shadow fell across his face, but he’d heard her approaching well before he’d sat down.

“Ace Rimmer, so cool he’s gonna get hypothermia if he doesn’t wear that leather jacket all the time,” Amelia Astatqé said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Arnold lifted an eyebrow over his sunglasses.

“Maybe you’d like to warm me up then?” He was nearly able to keep a straight face as he said this. Amelia gave him a kick before sitting down next to him. She rubbed her hand through his close cropped curly brown hair, much to his annoyance. He waved her off.

“And your dad’s old driving gloves too? Adorable. However,” she said, plucking off his sunglasses. “I wish you’d quit wearing these. I like seeing your pretty green eyes, Arnie.” He gave her a wry smile, looking vaguely in her direction.

“They’re just for decoration, love. The prettiest eyes of all the boys in the land, and they don’t work at all. Ironic, isn’t it?” He batted them affectionately at her.

“At least you’re spared looking at that smug git in the mirror every morning.”

“That’s true. I’d probably never leave my sight.”

“You’re intolerable!” she said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. It was one of his favourite sounds.

Her left hand touched his, but he didn’t notice. He wouldn’t have noticed if she’d pulled out a butterfly knife and sliced off one of his fingers. They’d never been able to repair the nerve damage in his hand, just as they’d never been able to repair his eyesight.

It was the reason he wore the gloves, and the reason he wore the mirror sunglasses. It didn’t bother him that he couldn’t look people in the eyes when they spoke to him, and the red, marbled scarring on his hand didn’t embarrass him. But he covered them up to make other people comfortable. He knew that other people were embarrassed for him.

He could feel the nervous tension whenever people realized he was blind, or saw his hand. Arnold spent a lot of time trying to make other people comfortable. It was why he put on the easy going, over the top bravado. To put people at ease, and to cover up the fact that he was secretly terrified all the time.

There were days when Arnold Jonathan Rimmer Jr. felt like he lived in constant fear of some invisible evil that dogged him like a shadow. He knew it was stupid and irrational, but some days it just felt like his lungs were two sizes too small, and he still had nightmares.

Fifteen years old and still a month hadn’t gone by where at least once his father hadn’t had to come to his room to comfort him while he cried like a baby. It frustrated him to no end.

So he put on his sunglasses, flashed his charming smile, and thought of Ace.

In spite of how hard he’d tried to hold onto them, Arnold only had the vaguest memories of his childhood hero, the man who’d come down from the sky and saved him from his terrible home. It had only been a few weeks in the cockpit of that ship when he was seven years old, but it had changed his entire life.

Now he could barely remember what Ace sounded like. When ever he thought of his voice in his mind, it just sounded like a deeper version of his dad’s.

Arnold loved his home on Europa, and his adopted family was like a faerie tale come true compared to the one he left. But sometimes at night Arnold would think of Ace and wish he’d come back, just one more time.

“What are you thinking about?” Amelia asked. He smiled.

“Just you’re beautiful face,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.

 

Michael Rimmer dropped the last ball into his bucket and headed back to his brother. He slowed down slightly when he saw Amelia. He tried to tamp down the little spark of jealousy she inspired in him.

He knew it wasn’t entirely fair, as Arnold always made time to play with him. He’d told Michael once that he’d been the youngest brother in his old family, and that his older brothers had been unendingly cruel to him. Arnold said that he was going to be the big brother to Michael that he never had, and he’d kept his word.

Ace, as everyone, including Michael, called him, was his hero. He didn’t let anything get in his way. Michael knew that his brother was embarrassed about his nightmares, and didn’t want to look weak in front of him, but Michael just saw him all the stronger for enduring them. He didn’t know what he was dreaming of, but if it was enough to scare Ace, it must be pretty terrible.

“Eech, can’t you two get a room or something,” Michael said, approaching the two.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Arnold quipped. Amelia punched him. “Hey, Mike, she’s hitting me. You gonna stand there and let her abuse me like this?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s practice going, Michael?” Amelia asked.

“Pretty good, but I’m gonna have to get a lot better if I want to beat Jim.”

Jim and Bexley Lister were Michael’s best friends, but Jim was also his biggest rival. The two were extremely competitive with each other, and Jim, being the more physically inclined of the twins, was the pitcher for the Falga Flyers.

It had been Jim who’d baited Michael into joining the Little League team, betting that even if he joined, the Flyers would still wreck the Eagles. Naturally Michael signed up the next day, while Bexley rolled his eyes at how easily the pair wound each other up.

They were the only two who could convince each other to do anything. Jim’s father had tried so hard to get him interested in zero gravity football, but it just didn’t grab Jim. Bexley would have bet a hundred dollar-pounds that Jim would have joined up the next day if Michael bet he couldn’t do it. Unfortunately for Dave Lister, the pair set their sights on ordinary gravity baseball.

“Jim does have a year’s experience on you, kiddo,” Amelia said.

“Maybe, but I’m faster than him.”

“I’m sure he’d argue that,” Arnold said.

“My legs are longer than his, so of course I’m faster.”

“What, are you two racing to puberty now too?”

“No, but if we were I’d win.”

 

Arnold Rimmer Sr. sat in the modest comfort of the low backed arm chair, looking out the window at the River Cadmus.

Doctor Edmund Farran sat across from him in patient silence. One had to be patient to council a man like Arnold Rimmer.

Rimmer sighed, running his long pale fingers through his curly, greying hair. Time was marching on, and still they both waited.

Rimmer had been seeing Farran for nearly ten years, starting sessions shortly after the birth of his son, Michael.

He’d been terrified, as most new parents were. Rimmer found his fear to be paralyzing. He was afraid he was going to hurt Michael. The only parenting he was familiar with was what he grew up with, and taking stock of the mental and physical scars he’d inherited, he’d have killed himself before bringing his son up that way.

Often Rimmer considered that it might have been easier for Yvonne and Michael if he’d died in the accident that killed every member on board the JMC mining ship, Red Dwarf. That way he’d never have a chance to screw his kid up.

The trouble was understanding what was a normal reaction, and what was internalized chaos. Rimmer existed in a constant state of chaos, knew how to cope and survive in it. His hypervigilance left him lost in ordinary situations.

He remembered vividly the day his 13 month old son dropped a tea cup off the table, shattering it on the floor. The boy laughed.

If he’d been his father, he’d have belted the child across the face, screaming at him while mashing his tiny hands into the shards of broken china. He froze as the scenario played itself out in his mind.

Yvonne tutted and started picking up the bits of broken cup.

“Oops,” she said brightly. “Looks like we had a little accident.” She looked at her husband, who looked like a deer caught in the head lamps. “Are you alright?” she’d asked.

How could he tell her that he’d just imagined beating her infant son? Her precious only child?

It was one of those nights he’d thought about going to the pub and never coming back. Instead, he’d looked up Dr. Farran and made an appointment.

They made incremental progress, but it was up hill all the way. Rimmer had never struck his wife or children, but he recalled that in his own childhood, it was never the bruises, broken bones, or torn muscles that had hurt him the most. Those things healed, for the most part. He was left with scars, stretch marks, and one less kidney, but his body mended itself.

It was the open wounds in his psyche that were left infected and suppurating. The little voices that told him he was worthless, that his family would be better off without him.

It was this legacy he was afraid to pass on to Michael.

Things became enormously more complicated when Arnie Jr. arrived.

Arnold Jonathan Rimmer was not his son. He was him. He’d been rescued from a parallel universe by yet another version of himself from another dimension still. It made his head ache to think about, but there it was. A seven year old Rimmer, looking like death barely thawed out, seeking refuge from a father who had been even more abusive than his own. A father who would have killed him.

Of course, he couldn’t tell any of this to Farran. He’d said Arnold Jr. had come from a previous relationship, and he hadn’t known about his first “son” until he’d been dropped off at his door.

There were only two other people who knew the truth about his eldest; Yvonne, and Dave Lister. Not even Arnold Jr. knew the truth. He believed that Rimmer had been his real father, and Arthur, his biological father, had been his step father.

If Rimmer thought bringing up a child from scratch was difficult, raising himself, preloaded with all the abuse and self loathing was herculean.

“I’m finding,” Rimmer finally said, “that the advice I give to Arnie is what I wish I could have said to myself at his age.” It had become easy for Rimmer to dissociate from the metaphysical irony of these conversations, having eight years of practice. “And sometimes that makes it easy for me to take it on, myself. To listen to that advice and apply it to myself, do you know what I mean?” Farran nodded. Rimmer’s brows knitted as he continued to stare at the languid flow of the river. “His fortitude honestly staggers me. How easy it is for him to make friends, to talk to girls, to get good marks in school. And then I remember, oh, right, it wasn’t easy at all. He’s worked incredibly hard to be a normal, functioning person. But the fact that he was able to do it, and I never managed to figure it out… I’m jealous. I’m jealous of my own son.”

“You wonder how he found a way through that ill-lit maze, and wonder why you never found that light, given your incredibly similar backgrounds?” Farran asked.

Sometimes Rimmer wondered if Farran didn’t secretly know the truth about the situation. Farran was a soft spoken man with a voice like gravel. A combination that was oddly comforting. His long, grey face and silver hair reminded Rimmer of an old Irish wolfhound. His large black eyes seemed to see into every one of Rimmer’s feeble mistruths, but he never commented on them. Never judged them.

“Have you considered that the difference in his life is you? That you’re the light in his maze? You understand, intimately, the way he thinks, the context in which he sees the world. Who better to navigate him?”

“Honestly, I think the reason Michael and Arnold aren’t totally non functional is because of Yvonne. She doesn’t just equalize my idiocy, she transcends all of it. I mean, I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that she saved me. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for her.” He snorted. “Probably a corpse in deep space on Red Dwarf.”

 

Yvonne parked her drab matte grey Space Corps issued ground vehicle into the driveway and stepped out, pulling her long brunette hair out of its tight regulation approved ponytail, and lit a cigarette.

“Mum, why on Io do you insist on such an unhealthy habit?” Arnold wheedled as he came up to the house with his brother in tow. Arnold had never even been to Io, but he’d picked up that quaint phrase from her darling husband.

“You know, there are days I’d swear you’re your father’s clone,” she said, knowing full well she was the only one who truly appreciated those private jokes. Yvonne thought it was a shame that Arnold Sr. wasn’t here to squirm indignantly at the comment.

She ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead, which Arnold endured with high dudgeon. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to put it all back in place.

“Why does everyone insist on doing that? Jealousy? A perfect quaff doesn’t happen by accident, you know.”

“What about being a perfect twat?” Michael quipped.

“Michael Ryan Rimmer,” Yvonne said sharply while trying to restrain a laugh. “Language.”

“Yes, mum,” he said.

“And Arnie, dear?”

“Yes, mum?”

“Do stop being a twat.”

It wasn’t long before a second drab matte grey Space Corps issued ground vehicle arrived, two twin boys the first to jump out of the back, greeted by an enthusiastic Michael. Kristine Lister followed shortly after, snagging Yvonne’s fag, taking a puff. Dave waved from the driver’s seat before taking off back down the road.

The two women headed inside and Yvonne put the kettle on.

“How’ve you been, then?” Yvonne asked.

“Exhausted. We’re going underway soon, so the Prince of Packet has been making up for the time we’ll miss while I’m gone.”

“You slut,” she laughed.

They sat around the kitchen table, watching their children play. Jim, Bexley, and Michael were taking turns having the much taller Arnold swing them around, playing their “astronaut training game.”

“This will be important when you become one of those jar head Space Marines,” Arnold would tell Michael.

Watching Arnold and Michael play and interact warmed her heart in an achy kind of way. Like her husband, she couldn’t help thinking about all the what-ifs. What if Arnold’s older brother’s had banded together and protected each other from their draconic parents, instead of back stabbing and leaving every man to himself?

There were many times in Yvonne’s acquaintance with Arnold Rimmer that she wanted to personally demonstrate to his parents why she had been the female boxing champion on Red Dwarf. Why she had been known as the Irish Lion.

The night she found Arnold Jr.’s scars, it took a tremendous amount of will not to take the next light speed zipper to Io and put Margaret Rimmer in the hospital, or in a box next to her husband. Yvonne didn’t care that it had been a Maggie Rimmer from another dimension. It was clear that there wasn’t a Maggie Rimmer out there worth spit.

Rimmer had always been a fairly heavy sleeper, so her husband didn’t hear the washer running that night.

Little Arnie Jr. had been with them for about a week. It had been an intense adjustment period for everyone.

Yvonne had always known about the horrific torment her husband had endured in childhood. It was evident in every line on his skin, reflected in his behaviour and in the way he saw the world. But it was nearly a 15 year old mirror, and dulled by the distance of time.

In Arnold Jr., she got to see it fresh. It sickened her to her core to see the trauma vivid and ripe in the little boy’s soul.

She found him in the laundry room, trying to muffle his sobs while stuffing his wet bed sheets into the washing machine. Washing powder had spilled all over as the shaking child tried to blindly navigate the unfamiliar room.

“Arnie?” she said. The boy jumped and trembled, trying to keep his crying under the threshold of hysteria.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, please, it was an accident.”

“You had an accident while you were sleeping?”

“I’m sorry, please don’t cut me, please,” the boy begged and cowered beside the washer.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Arnie,” Yvonne said, trying to sound calm. “It’s okay,” she said, kneeling down in front of him. She gently touched his hand and he flinched away. “It’s okay,” she soothed again. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” She looked down at his wet pyjamas. “Let’s get you into the bath and cleaned up, okay?”

Yvonne took Arnold to the bathroom and ran hot water in the tub. When he undressed, she saw why he was so terrified. All along his little organ, his groin, and upper inner thighs were thin white scars. A chill cut through her.

“Arnold, when you were at your old home, and you had an accident, what would happen?” She hated asking, and his face flushed with fear and shame.

“Mummy would be very cross. She would take one of father’s razor blades and she… she would,” his voice trembled and failed. “She said if I did it again, she’d use the kitchen shears and cut it off.” He started to cry again.

“It’s okay, Arnie. She can’t hurt you anymore, and I never will, ever. I promise.”

Yvonne got the boy cleaned up and dressed him in one of Rimmer’s t-shirts. He swam in it, but it was clean. She folded out the futon bed in the living room and tucked him under a clean duvet.

“If you need anything at all, just come ask, okay?” She smoothed out his hair and kissed his forehead.

Yvonne climbed back into bed and threw her arms around her husband, trying not to cry as he startled awake.

“How can people do that to children?” she asked, hugging Rimmer tighter as he stroked her hair. She sat up and stared at him with volcanic fury. “Your mother is never seeing these children, ever. She is never coming near Michael, or Arnold. Do you understand?”

Rimmer nodded. He did understand. Not that his mother had ever expressed any interest in seeing her grandchildren in the first place. When Michael had been born, the event seemed to Maggie Rimmer to be mostly a scientific curiosity that anyone would willingly breed with her youngest son.

Rimmer tended towards coddling Arnold, but Yvonne knew that the boy would be stronger for not being treated like glass. It wasn’t too long after their evening incident when she took him down to the basement. She took him by the shoulders and guided him where she wanted him to stand.

“Alright, Arn, reach your hands out and feel in front of you.”

He extended his arms and his fingers touched a cool, smooth, curved surface. He put his palms flat against it, feeling its not insignificant weight.

“That’s a heavy bag. A punching bag.” Yvonne went over and picked up a pair of small, worn boxing gloves. “Here, put your hands up.” She slipped the gloves over his hands and laced them up. A perfect fit, but then they would be. “These used to belong to Arnold. Your father.”

Arnold was still getting used to the idea that this other Arnold was his real father. In ways he would never be able to explain, somehow it just felt right to Arnold. He did instinctively feel closer to this man than to his, apparently adoptive father, Arthur.

“Alright, Arn, not too tight? Not too loose? Give that bag a punch.” The boy hesitated and Yvonne gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Arnold reached out again to make sure where the bag was before pulling his right arm back and hitting the bag with a soft _pap._ He smiled. “You like that, eh? Go on, hit it again.” He reached back and hit it harder.

It wasn’t long before he was hitting the bag with both fists, throwing all of his energy into each hit until he was sitting breathless on the floor, exhausted but feeling good.

“Now listen, anytime you’re not feeling to good, if you’re feeling angry or frustrated or bored or whatever, if you feel like you need to let off a little steam, you’re free to come down here and knock this thing around as long as you like.”

Rimmer wasn’t entirely convinced that Yvonne teaching Arnold to box was a good idea, but she insisted otherwise. She was aware that Rimmer had a habit of projecting his exaggerated self-doubts onto Arnold, which was one of the reasons he treated the boy with kid gloves. She wanted to nip that in the bud as soon as possible.

Yvonne wasn’t sure who was prouder between Rimmer and herself when Arnold became his age group’s boxing champion in his 9th year. Michael started training with them, starting a year earlier than Arnold had.

Yvonne was a lioness, and she was going to teach her cubs how to fight back.

 

After his session with Dr. Farran, Rimmer met Lister in the Castalia Arms pub for lunch. He found the Scouser at their usual table, the one with the wobbly leg that Rimmer hated. He sighed as he sat down, like a slowly leaking balloon.

“Jim and Bexley at the house?” Rimmer asked. Lister nodded.

“They wanted to show Mike the new bug they found,” Lister said. “They’re into bugs now. I slightly suspect that Jim is becoming the bug eating kid at school, which I’m trying to discourage.” Rimmer raised an eyebrow.

“Like father, like son, eh?”

“That was one time, and for modest financial reward. Also, the worm in the tequila doesn’t count.”

“How’s work? Put out any fires?”

“Kindling,” he said.

That was their little code. Lister, like Rimmer, had escaped nuclear death aboard Red Dwarf, and like Rimmer, it was because he was chasing a girl. Kristine Kochanski, now Kristine Lister.

When Lister thought about what might have happened if he’d stayed on Red Dwarf, the fact that his life could have ended at 25 with little significance, it scared him. When he was expecting twins, it terrified him. He decided to make something of his life and become an engineer. As it turned out, he had a knack for it. Not just a knack, but a real gift.

He wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but he was involved in several secret think tank projects for the Space Corps. The one that Lister always kept an ear open for was Project Wildfire.

It had been difficult for Lister to believe Rimmer’s story about the dimension hopping space hero duplicate dropping off a younger version of himself to take care of, though Lister couldn’t think of any reason to invent a story like that. Except maybe Rimmer was beginning to find domestic life a little dull and wanted to make things a little more exciting. But that seemed like a big stretch, especially for a man whose idea of exciting comprises of alphabetizing the pantry.

Lister never understood why Yvonne, a down to earth and wholly rational person, believed the story completely until a few years later when she personally requested the mechanic be conscripted to her development team.

It was at that point she was able to tell Lister that when Arnold Jr. arrived, the Space Corps was beginning the process of taking dimensional travel into serious consideration, projecting a working model within the next 25 years or so.

It was also difficult to ignore the fact that Arnold Jr. was beginning to look exactly like Rimmer as he grew older. The fact that Arnold Jr. would be just about the same age as Ace Rimmer had appeared, though he’d never be a test pilot due to his visual impairments, was another odd coincidence. Frankly, the accumulation of all these “coincidences” was enough to convince Lister that Rimmer’s story had some merit.

“Are you sure you don’t want back in?” Lister asked. “We could use a draftsman, and I know I could get you a placement on my team.”

Rimmer shook his head. They’d had this conversation before. It was ironic how the tables had turned. Rimmer spent 15 years trying to climb the Space Corps ladder, and Lister was just trying to hitch a ride home.

When Red Dwarf was lost, they were both confronted with life altering epiphanies. While Lister realized he could have lived and died a life without merit, Rimmer realized that it was entirely possible to fail at something you hate and die trying.

It was a tough road to climb. To deconstruct 31 years of trying to force a square peg in a round hole, believing your life depended on it. And frequently in the Rimmer household, it did.

Admitting that he had zero interest in astronavigation, physics, or engineering had been hard. It sent him into a hideous existential depression, feeling overwhelmed at being over 30 and having to start over. Not knowing anything about yourself. Without the Space Corps, without his father’s expectations, who was Arnold Judas Rimmer?

This is where Yvonne and Michael came in. Yvonne was a tough woman, one of the things he loved about her. She was always there to lovingly give his skinny arse a kick when he was feeling rudderless, and ask to also pick up the milk.

It was difficult to feel sorry for yourself when your son is hungry.

Surprisingly, Rimmer found he liked being a father. It was never something he’d imagined for himself. When Rimmer pictured his future, it was hard to imagine sharing it with someone else.

On Red Dwarf, Lister would take the piss out of him about his social life, in that he didn’t have one to speak of. So Rimmer played it off. Claimed to be a love celibate aromantic, devaluing affection and companionship so his heart wouldn’t clang so loud and hollow in its absence.

Like a coward, he hid away from his own desires. He never realized how hideously transparent the charade was to Lister, and when he drunkenly confessed one night that he would trade everything in, his pips, his long service medals, even that elusive gold bar of Navigation Officer to love and to have been loved, the only thing that surprised the Scouser was that his bunkmate actually admitted it.

Making a life on Europa with Yvonne, Michael, and Arnold Jr., Rimmer had found the only thing he really wanted in life.

Rimmer would never forget the look in his duplicate’s eyes when he left for dimensions unknown. At first, Rimmer thought this “Ace” had it all worked out, being a dashing space hero. But the longing ache in his lonely green eyes when Ace looked at the family photos on Rimmer’s mantle, when he told Rimmer, “you are the lucky one,” it truly hit Rimmer how blessed he was.

As a husband and a father, living and striving for someone outside himself, he found value in his own life. He had found paradise. Go back to the Space Corps?

“Not in three million years.”


End file.
